Corey Drieth's gouache & wood paintings explore contemplative spiritual experience inspired by religious traditions such as Zen Buddhism & Quaker Christianity. Citing artists such as Georgia O'Keefe, Agnes Martin & Richard Tuttle as precedents, his work aligns with the American traditions of small-scale, non-representational abstraction. Drieth's new drawings, composed of graphite & white colored pencil on aspen wood, directly explore two kinds of order, the organic & the analytic. The works are rooted in childhood memories of his father drawing diagrams on pieces of wood used to construct utilitarian & decorative objects. "I thought that the marks on the wood were in and of themselves interesting, incomplete & full of potential," notes Drieth.

Bad Religion was made for an exhibition in San Francisco where a group of artists were asked to make work in response to a short, ephemeral video prompt provided by the curators. Stephen Slappe began his entry by giving himself one rule, that he would only watch the video prompt three times. During the initial viewing, he took in the video, making no attempt to purposefully record any specifics. The second and third viewings involved much note taking, jotting down short phrases about the tone, content, and formal details of the video.

Slappe got the sense that the characters were always fragmented or obscured, it felt mysterious and ritualistic. The trajectory of one character toward another character communicated both urgency and inevitability. For Bad Religion, he lifted these tonal and structural qualities, amplified, then transposed onto new images and sounds.

In 2015 PNCA's new Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design will become one of the most transformative building projects in the history of the city of Portland. Generally, we don't cover social events but this project is special. In fact, PORT was the first in the media to see the potential for the project, not just for the school but the city... so when PNCA threw a pre-buildout tour, we thought it was time to share a little more of it with the world.

Frank Lloyd Wright would have been 145 this month. Also, his fantastic Marin County Civic Center has turned 50 years old as well and you have never seen it like this before (ie a spaceport in the Star Wars Universe):

Beatles expert Scott Freiman will be at the Hollywood Theatre on Thursday. He has studied the band from an early age and will be presenting his multimedia lecture, "Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper," to the theatre for a second time. Freiman combines his career as a composer, producer, and educator with his in-depth knowledge of The Beatles to bring an event that is part film, part concert, and part lecture.

Sarah McNeil tells stories with sculptural installation and contemporary animation. Growing up in a family of antique auctioneers in a small town on the coast of Maine, she inherited a love of handcrafted objects, historic artifacts & the richly layered narratives behind them.

In a world full of major recurring events... only the Venice Biennale holds the record for being a persistent affair since 1895, slightly edging out the modern Olympic Games, which started in 1896 and the first World's Fair in Brussels in 1897.

This year is seen as a kind of return to the event as a catalog of humanity so there is a sort of anthropological thread that runs through the anchor show at the Arsenale (Over 200 countries also have separate pavilions and there are countless other exhibitions both official and unsanctioned as well.

Mack McFarland was kind enough to send us hundreds of snaps, which we will edit down into something more digestible. First off, he's sent us to the Arsenale's "The Encyclopedic Palace" and the curatorial pacing of the exhibition by Gioni really comes through in the photos. Group shows like this are difficult to pull off without looking like the midway of some county fair so you'll see how he used a lot of earthy installations or ones that mimic a crowd of people to set up a kind of festival atmosphere without too much busking. -Jeff Jahn

(All photos Mack Mcfarland) The keystone of the exhibition is Marino Auriti's The Encyclopedic Palace ... a proposed model from the 1950's for a tower that would house, "The Encyclopedic Palace of the World." The finished building would put the range of human achievements on display.

We've got one of our classic June log jams of content for you with no less than four major pieces coming your way in the next two weeks. The first should be here soon (it involved a lot of geological maps etc. to double check). Till then here are some links:

I really like how Painting in Place is literally repositioning painting. Obviously this is nothing new (is it ever in painting?) but it seems to be a bit of pushback against the market and the sometimes nagging feeling that the art world has disengaged itself from the rest of the world. We should do this in Portland, bank presidents check your walls... I'll be calling.

On Thursday, June 13, The Northwest Film Center is thrilled to present STRESS POSITION, the latest work by Vancouver, B.C.-based filmmaker A.J. Bond.

Inspired by a flippant remark about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Bond made a bet with close friend and longtime collaborator actor David Amito to see which of them could withstand a week of psychological torture at the hands of the other.

Shot in an avant-garde "torture chamber" in an isolated warehouse, what begins as a bizarre and darkly humorous reality TV scenario quickly spirals out of control, testing the limits of their friendship and exposing the connection between filmmaking and torture.

"The passage of time and the story of the sensuous human experience lay on my work. I erode, then build again, reminiscent objects from the past, cycled through the fire, to the future to erode again." Richard Brandt is inspired by his passion for adventure, experimentation, and the discovery of his true nature. The utensils for tea and his love for the land guide his forms and pace.

John George Larson is a painter and wood fire ceramic artist from southwest Minnesota. He discovered clay at age fourteen as a means of expression and as an alternative way of exploring fundamental physics. John is currently building his fifth wood kiln and maintains his studio in Milan Minnesota. He uses native clays and other indigenous materials to create his works. Under a constant spell to discover the truth, the resulting works are an exploration into the magnification of the object as metaphor and the physical and mental limitations of the human body.

McLemore is a Portland based ceramic professor, and this shows through his work. Guiding students in the observational of natural and human-made structures, his work is formally designed and abstract. His objects currently on display at Eutectic are relics of industrial design. They have been lost, decayed or edited over time, and remain fragments of a greater, discarded system. Organized to implicate utility, the somewhat awkward forms are not tools, yet try to charm with a certain hand-hewn conviction.

Friday June 7th 20 artists at Portland Storage will have their annual open studios. This is always a lively event.

Open Studios | June 7th | 5 - 9PM
215 SE Morrison Street

Tonight, galleryHomeland kicks off Weird Shift Con with The Long Share, an exhibition in keeping with the conference of shifted reality that it supports.

"The Conference, an aggregate of interdisciplinary investigations, presentations, performances and puzzles that promise to implode, sinter and splinter (ir)reality prismatically into many new streams for retrieval and report."

"The Long Share exhibit (including works by Peter Claugh, Julia Oldham, Tom Sherman, Stephen Slappe, Soda Jerk, Weird-Fiction and others!) to additional amenities, including the Research Commons, the PDF Library, the dossiers, and the Map Room, paired with fine coffee and edibles, will provide other itineraries betwixt and between the scheduled events." It should be wierd.

"Ritual, The Show" has transformed Blackfish gallery space. An exhibit created by Blackfish member Merridawn Duckler and guest artist Geordie Duckler, invites visitors to partake in three separate experiences that combine ritual and art.

Blackfish is also hosting "Ritual," a companion, group exhibition of works in various media that explore ideas about ritual.

Many have tried to explain color through poetic characterizations and elaborate analytical and organizational systems. Despite these efforts, conversations about color remain subjective with little tie to hard fact.

In conjunction with BECon 2013, Bullseye Gallery presents Chroma-Culture, an exhibition focused on color, featuring fifteen artists from around the world. Color is subjective, explained scientifically as the sensation of the visual spectrum. It is a physical process in which electromagnetic waves of a particular length stimulate receptors within the eye. Within are brain, we transform this into color and form.

Each of the Chroma-Culture artists, using kilnformed glass, approaches color in unique ways, making works that tackle the visual, psychological, symbolic, and cultural implications of color.

Criticism isn't simply a description or a parroting back of the artist's statement,
which does nothing to improve the state of the arts. Instead, we ask difficult
questions and pursue an understanding of the way art operates and comes into being.

Ultimately, it is this commitment to defining and relevant reviews + essays
that are at the heart of what we do. Here are ten examples that that celebrate what PORT does:

There is something about criticism that makes the discussion broader, more present and sharper for everyone. Criticism, especially that with a finer edge actually can motivate discussion. That type of true criticism is inherently inconvenient and perhaps the best corrective to the constant packaging and pure public relations that even art is subject too. Criticism helps us step back from ourselves and re-examine our priorities and experiences through a different understanding. A "Critic" brings experience beyond opinion, often sussing out the more arcane motivations and effects of art. It all takes time... in the case of PORT (a community of writers) it takes 8 years.